IV
It’s been two weeks, and until recent events, I had decided that death was preferable to madness and had even begun to plan it. But now there may be another way.
I healed someone today and I don’t know how – but it somehow turned the volume down on everything else, making me think that the two are connected.
It was during my rounds in the ICU. There is a small area of patients that are not expected to recover. Most are unconscious; some come around a few moments every hour or so and murmur incoherent words before drifting off. I have to bathe them every day and dump their fouled bedpans. It takes time but I do it without complaint. Today a new arrival appeared with a rippled wound on his leg, near his femoral artery. It looked like half of his leg had literally melted, except that there were no burns and no scar tissue.
Without quite knowing how or why, my hand slipped down into his wound, touching the ends of his flesh. I could feel a tingling through my hands as if a mild electric current was being channeled through it. Then slowly, I saw the flesh itself move – the ends moving towards each other. I reached out and helped the two ends together, touching the flesh that would not knit. And slowly, blood began to flow and coagulate. As I held the wound closed I realized that the voices and the pain had diminished to a dull ache and a whisper. I stayed holding the wound until it closed, then moved on. It took a few hours for the effect to wear off, but until then, I could walk around the camp without the assault on my senses.
The next day, the soldier was moved into recovery. The wound had entirely healed.
If that was the only occurrence, I would have shrugged it off to a messiah complex, or coincidence. But it wasn’t. There were more. Are more. The more soldiers I handle when they are brought in, the more survive their wounds. I can’t get to them all but since that healed leg in the ICU not one of the soldiers touched by me in triage has died. The camp commander is baffled. His casualty rates have dropped substantially and he can’t account for it. I don’t know what is happening to me.
Several weeks later the commander summons me to his office and tells me that I’ve been transferred. I’m too shocked to reply and he mutters something about me having friends in high places while handing me a pad for my thumbprint. Twenty hours later I say goodbye to the hospital forever.